#I elect to make it the big plotline of Zuko and Ursa in this AU

[lightdancer1]

The Best Case AU is also a solid deconstruction in its own right

And the premise it deconstructs is that the best case scenario for Ursa and Zuko and Azula would be good for the world on the whole. Because no, actually, it would not be. Even if Azulon conveniently dies and Ozai bungles his coup and dies as well from a 'stroke' by poison from you know who, they're still products of a eugenics experiment. Even if Iroh in this AU learns the full scale of this, fundamentally rejects it, he still faces the reality that his nephew believes himself entitled to his son's throne.

He places his niece in a place to live in peace and to make her own choices, but she's still a product of that program and she will still have a driving desire to excel that goes down healthier paths....but leaves her one of the most powerful Firebenders in the world at her age all the same, with abilities predisposed to excellence in combat.

In a scenario absent Ozai's unfettered power, Iroh and Lu Ten are still the agents of willful imperialism at the expense of their neighbors, and with the theocratic elements of the earlier Fire Nation in lieu of the canonical secular autocracy they're a more theocratic system run by the Fire Lord exploiting aspects of the older system to grant a deceptively broader basis of power and control and responsibility.

There are no good scenarios for an imperialistic world war, there are no universes where the people who do this are good people. Lesser cruelty to their own family does not alter this harsh truth. And the only true paths for the Fire Nation Royal Family and the Fire Nation to genuine redemption is to grasp that imperialism IS evil, that they collectively ARE doing evil deeds, and that they must change their path and go down a different direction altogether.

This AU applies a merciless deconstruction to the kinder and nicer imperialism of Lu Ten and Iroh in all the other AUs by virtue of Lu Ten in this AU coming into full confrontation with a canon-style 'The Throne was mine from birth and mama said so' storyline.